Greater Cincinnati Water Works

Or doesn't, perhaps...

In any event, I am once again subject to the whimsy of the water utility from Cincinnati, and am already being punished for it.

Last night we received our first quarterly bill from GCWW. It is a partial bill, and we were told we'd get it, so that wasn't a surprise in any of itself. For 21 days service, we were billed $44.71, which I think is extremely high but, again, I knew it would be. The icing on the cake, however, is yet to come...

The previous tenant hadn't paid HIS last bill... and GCWW tells me I have to do it.

After explaining that I do not own the house, the guy kindly informed me that it may not be my responsibility to pay it, but if I want my water to remain on, SOMEONE will have to pay it.

After doing a little research, I decided to call PUCO, the utilities commission here. Sadly, not enough research apparently because PUCO doesn't do anything with this particular water utility because it is a municipal system (I didn't realize that), but they did tell me that I can call the mayor's office and complain.

Odd, I think, that I'm calling the mayor's office of a city in which I do not live nor pay taxes to complain about a utility that I always figured was a private corporation in the first place. Surprisingly, though, the person I spoke to there seemed to want to help me, but admittedly offered no advice on how to proceed in the matter. Apparently she'll call me back. :-/

So now I'm left with calling our landlord to discuss how to handle this bill as expediently as possible. It is my hope that we'll simply agree to deduct it from my next rent payment and I can get the thing paid in full immediately. If not, while I'm not in a hurry to start a shit storm, I have to wonder if this could somehow constitute a violation of our lease on their part...

I honestly don't see how it is that anyone has the right to take a debt incurred by one person and impose it upon another in this manner, but I'm dealing with the water utility and, all kidding aside, I have never had a particularly positive relationship with any water utility...  

Couponing vs. Fair Pricing

Lately, as my wife has considered getting into this “couponing” fad, as it is called, it has come to my attention again just how silly some of the pricing schemes can be at most stores for most products.

Of course, this stems from what we've read and watched of “Extreme Couponing” online and on TV. Admittedly, we don't have subscription TV so mostly I'm referring to online reading, but that isn't necessarily the point.

First and foremost, I've heard of people reducing their store bills by as much as 98% on any one particular occasion, but I know that this isn't an actual “norm.” My reading suggests that avid couponers can regularly see savings of 50% or so with a reasonable investment of time and currency, and I am going to support it if my wife wants to get into it simply for that. Half off of anything is still half off. That said, I cannot understand the madness that leads to couponing in the first place.

No, I don't mean that the consumers are mad – that I do totally understand. The madness on the side of the stores and salespeople, however, I will never be able to understand or truly tolerate.

So some people are able to save money on goods and services by cutting small pieces of paper out of larger pieces of paper that magically make the value of the item their buying decrease?

I find intense anger with the entire concept that a simple, consistent, fair price cannot be established on items sold at the store. If it costs X to make, advertise, stock, distribute, and sell a particular item, why is the sale price not as simple as X + profit? Why does the profit variable change from day to day or week to week due to “sale pricing” and “reduced for quick sale” situations? Why can I go to one store and buy an item for $1.09 but at another store across the street the same thing is $2.29 or $1.89?

And – yes this all boils down to inconveniencing me – why the hell should I have to be bothered with all of the bullshit in order to find the actual fair price of the item I want?

All of this leads into discussion of the websites like Groupon. Yes, I know there are others, but they are the only one I can think of by title. I won't visit these sites anyway because they tend to require JavaScript to operate, which means the likelihood of annoying advertising being displayed increases ten-fold. That aside, these sites claim too-good-to-be-true offers can be had, like a $500 professional photo-shoot for $65 or a $300 boot camp program for $59, and I've always been taught that if it looks too-good-to-be-true, it probably is. Regardless, my anger again directs itself at the provider of these services: If you can truly afford to offer these things to consumers at these supposedly reduced prices, you are massively ripping off customers at the regular prices

In other words, if I see the coupons, I'm not more likely to buy the item, I'm LESS likely simply because I decide that their regular price is a huge rip-off.

Fact is, I'd love to see a wave of outraged consumers run amok at a Wal-Mart or Meijer store because of this sort of crap, because I think this is riot-worthy. If you can sell it to me fair and square at a lower price, but are CHOOSING to rip me off, yes, that makes me extremely angry. I believe this sort of thing should infuriate Americans across the country, but I know better.

So yeah, I write about how I feel about it on my blog, but I know better than to think I can change it...

...unless someone has a mob at their disposal that is ready for a random grocery store riot.  Ha!

Sometimes I Have to Remember...

Just a small blurb tonight...

I get caught up in things sometimes to the point where I forget the most important thing in life:

My self.

And no, I don't mean it the way you might initially think...

I have this problem of thinking of myself in terms of what I do, particularly as it pertains to how I obtain money so that I can be, well... me. This leads me to find constant frustration in the things that I do for a living, sometimes being angry at one or more of my supervisors or other coworkers in general. Sometimes my frustration is with them – and other times my anger is more directed at their job function than it is themselves personally, a distinction that can get very fuzzy when in the moment.

What I'm getting at is... in all the hustle of work I sometimes forget that, while I must perform the duties assigned to me, I do not have to be the job. I am not an equipment operator or an inventory control person just because those may be my job titles. Just in as much as a supervisor that makes a decision I disagree with is not suddenly a bad person by the sole virtue of their title, I have no less worth as a result of any failing (real or imaginary) I may occasionally have in my job.

So what am I? I'm not so sure about that either, but I think refusing to identify myself as my job is the first step towards being it in truthfulness to myself.

Gassy Gripe

Been quiet again for a while, I know.

The thought had crossed my mind to play an April Fools joke by posting that I was going to close down the blog, but I realized that in the off-chance that anyone read it, it would probably be 30 days before I'd post again. Probably wouldn't be very funny by then.

Anyway, I feel like griping a little.

The only real gripe I have right now is the cost of gasoline going up so dramatically over the last couple months. I can attest to a 17% or more increase in the price of gasoline since December 20, 2010. Some people tell me that we're still nowhere near Europe's prices, of which I am well aware, but this isn't Europe. This isn't a country where mass transit is readily available, or even practical if it were, for half or more of the population. Further, I've noticed a cost increase between 4-10% on everything we buy (except beer, oddly) that I believe is linked to the rising fuel cost.

The mantra I hear repeatedly is that we need to drive less, and I agree with that in principle, but I can also say that I already drive near the absolute minimum. I don't go cruising about town for fun like I did when I was a teen, and I generally only drive to and from work every day with no other stops.

Sure, I could use a bicycle for my six mile commute, but I have to admit that my fear of other drivers maiming or killing me (particularly at midnight on the return trip) dissuades me completely from the idea... that and I'm woefully out of shape for the task and a significant portion of the trip to work is an uphill climb. But really, I think I'd do it if it weren't for other drivers sharing the space with me, I'd just have to walk part way until I reconditioned my body to the biking again.

So I look at this situation as an ever-depressing downer on my otherwise stagnant internal economy, and I'm not impressed. Worst of it is, some jackass is making money off of me and I feel powerless to prevent it...

Hell, I even had one guy at work tell me that I needed to buy a more fuel efficient car because of the fuel costs. I guess he doesn't realize that first, we're bankrupt and would probably be laughed at when we try to apply for a loan, and second, the monthly car payment (even at a “good,” pre-bankruptcy interest rate on a used vehicle) would certainly be larger than the fuel costs that it would be saving.

Yes, I learned this the hard way when we bought the Escort a few years back. On paper, it looked OK, but in practice we still spent more. And then the insurance cost more too... that was nice.

Well, I guess that just kinda came out as a ramble. Not sure how best to close this, so I'll just go random. Coffee FTW! Oh, and come on Cardinals! Start winning!

Business as Usual

There are times when I seriously think that companies, particularly news companies, seem to be intentionally trying to alienate their online readers through intrusive advertising. I understand they need to make money, but this has gotten to the point of lunacy – to the point where I've been experimenting with various ways of disabling advertisements and even completely boycotting sites on which ads cannot be blocked to my satisfaction.

This got started a few days ago when Fox News hit me with a new kind of ad that takes an screen-capture of the site and then uses an animation to slide the page down (like it is lying down) so that a nearly full-window ad can be played. I don't know what the ad was for (the only thing I pay attention to is the frustration in figuring out how to close it, not the content of it). The ad's “close” button was almost exactly the same color as the ad's background, so it was nearly impossible to see. Obviously, I wasn't incredibly impressed. By the time I had closed the ad, I had decided that I didn't really need to read any articles on Fox News, and have even removed the site from my bookmarks.

So I started checking out CNN and noticed they too have started using some pretty odd tactics with their ads, although nothing quite so infuriating as the Fox News example above. Most of their banner ads will expand from a tiny bar to a half-window length billboard when the page loads completely. What this means (for me, anyway) is I'm just starting to click on the link to the article I want to read by the time that the ad enlarges, moving my link out of the way and putting the expanded ad right under my cursor (meaning, I click on the ad by accident because everything has moved).

These tactics are abhorrent and clearly illustrate either how greedy they are or how badly they are hurting financially. In either case, I have found an interestingly easy little trick to kill most of the ads (including Fox News' evil in-line ads – you know, the ones that underline seemingly random words in the articles and show you ads ever if you accidentally hover your cursor over them?).

I have set my Chrome browser to disable JavaScript except on sites where I have deemed it “safe.” This list includes sites like this blog, Facebook, Twitter, and Reason, where the ads shown are done so in a tasteful manner and which I have deemed necessary for operation (Facebook doesn't work very well without JavaScript, and Twitter won't work at all), while I leave it disabled on pretty much every other site. Amazingly, Fox News and CNN's ads have gotten a lot less distracting, and in many cases have disappeared altogether.

Do I feel bad that they are going to lose a little bit of ad revenue? No, not really, especially if it means the difference between controlling the garbage content displayed on my screen or not. Fire the assholes thinking up these advertising tactics and I'll turn my JavaScript back on.

Did That Make You Feel Any Better?

There is occasion from time to time when I feel like breaking things. I haven't quite figured out why, especially considering that it doesn't really make me feel any better, nor do I like cleaning up the resultant mess, but it is true all the same. Tonight at work was very much one of those occasions. Of course, the evening progressed well up to a point, and I really could find no fault in anything up until the bitter end... but that end came, and has since went.

It is a reasonable thing to be expected to do a job until it is done. I respect the fact that every day certain things need to be done, and sometimes the occasion call for more things – or all possible things (as pertaining to a series of job functions) to be done, before the work is considered finished. In tonight's case, all on-inventory product had to be put away completely before we could leave because we're going to work tomorrow morning doing inventory counts.

Of course, I use “we” in the above sentence loosely. We as meaning me, mostly, and a few team leads and supervisors. How I ended up in that group is beyond me, but I was left with certain tasks that, with a group, could have been completed within 10-15 minutes. Instead, I spent over 70 minutes because it was decided that I was “already on it,” so no one else was needed.

Of course, I will concede, to my own credit, that very few others would have been willing to take the time to do what I was doing and do it accurately. That said, however, I do not feel that I was given the appropriate level of respect (not to mention compensation) for the hassle involved in completing those tasks and staying until 10:30 PM whilst being expected to go into work tomorrow morning at 9AM.

Completely unacceptable.

Of course, I also must concede, much to my frustration, that I would have probably still been there until 10:30 tonight even if I hadn't been pulled in 10 different directions, expected to do the jobs of others, and talked to as if I'm insignificant. One of the two cars remaining in the parking lot as I sped away belonged to one of my team leads who was still feverishly working on our normal duties, the so-called “Look Fors.” Don't ask. Anyway, I imagine he was just as frustrated as I was...

In fact, I may owe him an apology now that I think of it... I wasn't trying to be a particularly nice person near the end of the shift...

Circular Reasoning Prevails

One thing I've noticed about all the overtime at work recently is that I don't really mind the 500$ weekly paychecks. I don't mind that at all, seriously. I think my problem is that I work harder and longer for it than I used to and I have a major objection to that in and of itself.

Yes, I do realize I'm not the only one in the country that has gone from one job to another with a net decrease in pay. I admit to be quite perplexed at how easily my wife tolerates her own, rather massive, income drop, but I never hear a complaint about it from her. Face it, folks, if I didn't complain about it, I simply wouldn't be me.

My biggest problem with getting a different job right now (ignoring the economy) is a problem on paper only, or that of lacking paper to be more exact. I spent ten years working with and learning a great deal about computer networking, and even with that aside, I've got the same period worth of data entry time that should still land me a much less stressful job. Thing is, I don't have any documentation (or degrees) to prove that I have any skills at all. Sure, that's no one's fault but mine – it only serves to illustrate how I incorrectly expected employers to be more interested in workplace experience than book knowledge.

While I'm not entirely confident that a degree would save me in today's economy, it has caused me a lot of grief to not have it. Pretty much every job advertisement to which I would consider responding has declared firmly “those without at least a two-year degree need not apply” or similar. Even then, a lot of such jobs advertise lower pay than I receive today – are the overseas techies really willing and able to work for so much less?

So I guess I've resigned myself to sticking it out in the job I'm in for the foreseeable future... I mean, putting it in another way, if the economy isn't going to start adding “real” jobs until, oh, 2019 or so, I guess I'd better get entrenched where I am or get used to the idea of taking less pay in order to get out. So, like I said at the start of the post, I guess I don't really mind the 500$ weekly paychecks...

So Very Tired of Hurting

September 11, 2008 I sustained a back injury at work that has never quite left me in peace since. Today is feeling like one of my “bad” days, which is incredibly unfortunate considering we have plans with friends this evening. While the pain is pretty much continual, it varies in severity from day to day – today being at the point at which I hesitate to pick up anything that might be on the floor or even tie my shoes. Going from standing to sitting is uncomfortable too, and on days like these I find that leaning over the table to eat will cause me more grief than it is worth.

My only solace is in the fact that I have finally gotten over my pride and made an appointment with my doctor to see if there is anything we can do about this continued failure in pain management and healing. Those of you who know me well may be familiar with my extreme disinterest in dealing with physicians, the one caste of human being that seems to always act with arrogance, probably due to their seemingly god-like powers over life and death. As such, I have waiting far too long in having my troubles investigated further – a decision that I hope will not turn into a huge regret.

Hablante el Español en Los Estados Unidos Actualmente

Or, for the español-challenged: “Speaking the Spanish in the United States nowadays.”

Over the last ten years I have noted the ever-increasing number of products that are labeled in Spanish, and sometimes even advertised in Spanish. I try to not let these things bother me, but occasionally I find examples of the phenomenon I can't ignore.

For instance, I recall when I last went out to purchase a new DVD player. I had looked up reviews online and decided on one particular model that was both equipped with the features we wanted and priced low enough for us to be able to afford it. At the store, I spent a considerable amount of time looking for the item before I realized that the store had placed a large, incomprehensible inventory label on top of the entire English-language section of the box – I only recognized it because I had written the model number down.

I remember my surprise as I grabbed one of these boxes to find only two places where the unit's specifications were written; the English-language section completely covered by the aforementioned label. Why? I can't really say, but I have to admit my frustration with it. In this case, I chose to not complain because I figured it would have been a worthless gesture, but I seriously considered it anyway...

When did the United States become a bilingual country? Sure, I understand that English has never been the official language of the country, but most applicants for citizenship have to have a functional knowledge of the language. Why is it that about 1/3 of the people I work with are seemingly so ignorant when I attempt to communicate something to them? Why does my employer have to provide Spanish versions of our equipment checkout logs even though none of the bosses are fluent in Spanish? Further, why do my bosses tolerate it when these Spanish-speaking employees fail to follow reasonable orders as a result of the language barrier? I guess I should be thankful I'm not one of the bosses... I wouldn't tolerate it.

Ten years ago I had recently graduated from high school. I took three years of Spanish courses and one year of French, but never really picked up on any more than was absolutely necessary to pass the courses. I remember thinking that I would never need to understand Spanish because, quite frankly, I had never seen a practical application of the language anywhere in my life. Never had I seen an advertisement in Spanish, nor had I ever seen other tongues printed on product packages. I can't remember ever meeting anyone that spoke Spanish as their first language until four years ago, and it does kinda seem like in the last four years in particular I have seen an explosion of Spanish-focused marketing.

It seems to me that some immigrants are simply not even making an effort anymore to assimilate, choosing instead to force the creation of a double-culture that will do nothing but make lives harder and communication more difficult. This opinion was further enforced when my wife told me about an Hispanic child in her preschool class that speaks no English whatsoever. My wife doesn't know Spanish! Yet she has chosen to take on the task of learning at least a series of select Spanish words for the benefit of this particular child. I respect her motives (she is a better person than I) but I don't think it is reasonable for her to have to bother with it.

I don't really have any answers to any of the questions or problems I raise here... I do, however, wish for someone to come up with answers that satisfy my intent to be “me,” while still affording immigrants the opportunity to come here to work and live. Suffice to say, I don't think I should have to read Spanish (period) and I have no intent to really learn any more of the language than I have to to survive. So far, my opinions are shelved because, well, I figure I am a sort of “mental” minority, and I figure I shall continue forever to be so.

Business Gone Dumb

This should be a short one, but I just need to vent a little. I received a call this morning from the jokers at Cincinnati Bell, this time about our home service as opposed to our cellular service (the fiasco with which my Facebook friends should be familiar). Apparently they somehow confused the date for our move request and decided that they would go there TODAY instead of on September 20, the date we requested.

Of course, this presents a major problem because, not only do we not have possession of the apartment in question yet (and won't until September 17), but the outgoing tenant still lives there!

Fortunately, the technician called prior to arriving, but he sure sounded upset about it when I told him we weren't there, couldn't get in even if we were, and we weren't scheduled for today in the first place. Not really my fault, duh... and just to be sure, I called Cincinnati Bell and they do indeed have the correct date for the service change, so what happened is anyone's guess. This company really needs to get it's act together!

Change for the Sake of Change

(or Rant on Changes)

I'm the sort of person that doesn't deal well with change. As a general rule, with any modification to my life and schedule comes crankiness, forgetfulness, and new and creative uses of foul language.

Most of the daily changes I have to deal with tend to be forced by the management of the company for which I work. It is definitely a company that is willing to e xperiment with new ways of doing things, or at times to re-experiment with an old way of doing things (that probably didn't work very well). Of course, the employees fill the position of “lab rats” in this process, paying for the management's mistakes in blood, sweat, and unnecessary overtime hours.

So they change things, and then change them back, numerous times before settling on a course of action – usually the way it was before they started messing with it – and then pick something else to play around with like a kitten that has bored with its ball of yarn. Sometimes they change break schedules, other times job processes are modified. Other times yet they have changed entire shifts, forcing workers into new schedules to accommodate the company or even to quit entirely because their personal lives couldn't be so totally re-arranged on a whim.

Lets just suffice to say that I do tire of feeling like I'm owned by my employer... but that could be another post in and of itself so we'll move on.

Aside from work changing things, sometimes seemingly at random, there are many other sources of so-called “improvements” to life. Recently the State of Ohio passed legislation that changes child booster seat requirements so that our son is required to sit within a booster until he is 7 years old. While I understand the intent behind the law, it makes absolutely no concession for those of us who drive older vehicles that do not have shoulder belts in the back seats. As a result, my only way to comply with the law is to have my son ride in the front seat whenever he rides with me (which isn't terribly often).

Furthermore, booster seats are not intended to be used with a locking clip (that little metal H-shaped thing that locks the seat belt), but the belts in my older vehicles do not lock without it, further complicating my compliance with the law.

Fortunately the law doesn't require the booster to be placed in a back seat or I'd be completely screwed... Am I seriously in a minority to be a licensed driver with a vehicle over 20 years old and a booster-aged child? I understand the goal trying to protect children from vehicular deaths but laws need to be written in a manner that can be reasonably applied. I can't spent hundreds of dollars installing new seat belts in my vehicles (not that I'd even be able to find someone who could do it considering the availability of parts for them) and I'd really rather have my son restrained in the back seat, but I will comply to the best of my ability.

So while I deal with government and work changing things on me, I still have to deal with changes within my own family. My wife is starting a new job Monday and my son starts his home schooling the Monday proceeding. Both changes promise to bring new challenges to my schedule, including the need to wake up earlier while work forces me to go to bed later due to steadily increasing overtime. We won't even get into the havoc being wrought on Hickersonian economic policy, suffice to say that the budget has been overhauled six or seven times in the last month. While, like everything else, I know I'll make it through, I still have to acknowledge the stress and anxiety I feel constantly about it all.

So I sit down now with my morning coffee and try to find some way to relax before I face another day of random changes that serve little or no purpose, less random changes that serve other peoples' purposes, and purposeful changes that still continually leave me feeling like everything is out of control. I hope there will eventually be a time when I can get past it and just let it happen without apprehension, fear, or worry... but I honestly think I'm just “wired” to feel this way and that is one thing that will probably never change.

I'm Still Upset

I'm still upset.

Not that the reasons for my irritation are entirely out of my control... Surely some of my own decisions (and at times, indecision) influenced the situation. Of course, some of those decisions were probably influenced by those things that were entirely unpredictable, and as such I have less trouble further reducing my own perceived personal responsibility on the matters. Perception is everything right? If I don't feel like I should be responsible for something, am I still?

Perhaps.

In any event, a great many things led to the Hickersonian financial meltdown in 2009, and as I said a moment ago, I'm still upset.

I'm still upset about the loss of one of my jobs in January of 2009. This event has served as the catalyst for nearly every financial policy change made since. The reasons for termination were crap at best, and since my employment was severed remotely, I was never given an opportunity to let my side of the matter be heard. This was something that I firmly believe was out of my command entirely, and I could speak volumes about this job and how it ended... but I don't think that would serve much purpose here.

Following the job loss, there are certainly moments of indecision, or even just failure to act on decisions (which I suppose amounts to the same thing) for which I take full credit. For instance, there were numerous occasions in which I felt that I needed to find a new part time job doing anything that would provide our budget with at least an extra 200$ every month (about 1/6^th of what the previous part time gig provided). I figured that this, along with a package of budget cuts that I felt were nearly impossible at the time, would be enough to stave off most potential disasters. Since the bankruptcy, we've managed to enact nearly every budget cut that I ever considered prior to August of 2009, so the cuts were indeed possible, and honestly, I don't feel like we are worse for it.

Of course, I'm not entirely sure that getting another job and cutting expenses would have saved us in the long run. One of our early, pre-bankruptcy financial policy changes involved the so-called “sale” of one of our vehicles (and it's 370$ monthly payment) to one of our friends. I say “so-called” because the vehicle had to remain in our name because this friend was unable to finance it himself. For six or seven months he seemed to have no difficulty whatsoever paying for it, but when illness struck his wife payments became impossible for him, leaving me responsible for the payments while he continued to drive the vehicle... for a time, anyway.

As we prepared for the bankruptcy, we did end up “repo-ing” the car, so to speak, but it was difficult. I'm still upset that he didn't just return it to us the moment he couldn't pay for it anymore, but I am further upset that I even allowed to whole fiasco to take place. While I'm not sure there was much I could have done to avoid the bankruptcy, I do think I could have maintained the friendship had I simply never entered into the deal with him.

I'm also still upset with myself for my anger with this friend as I came to learn a few months ago that his wife passed away as a result of her illness... but I'm not entirely sure my actions could have been avoided.

My frustration continues to linger about loosing our house, even if I'm still convinced it was the right decision. To this day we still receive quarterly waste water and trash bills for the property because of various local legalities that leave us responsible for the property until the foreclosure process completes, even though we have no property rights there – we can't even legally enter the dwelling! It is possible that I wouldn't be so upset about this still if it weren't for these continual reminders...

That is one thing no one tells you when you start the bankruptcy process: is that sometimes you're still on the hook for certain expenses even though the trustee has abandoned your claims to the properties in question. I feel like I have every right to be a bit upset about that still... not that it would have changed anything, really.

So today I stand on the other side of the bankruptcy, feeling like we're doing better, but only (quite frankly) because of the charity of others, in particular my wife's family. I wouldn't even have a vehicle to drive to work if it weren't for them, and I remember this debt that we cannot repay daily. I admit, this further upsets me – I don't feel like I'm ever going to see true independence as a man, like I'm going to have to rely on others forever to keep my financial policies working even though, at least on paper, every financial plan I have ever created is logical and consistent with our goals and needs.

It is hard for some people (such as myself) to remember that life can't be plotted out on paper logically. I suppose if it could be, it would be too easy and probably not worth living, but it would certainly be more sensible and predictable.

So I continue to work for a company that, at times, seems hell-bent on my destruction simply to bring home a sufficient amount of currency to allow us to pay our rent and utilities and (hopefully) keep our vehicles running. No wage increase this year, of course (what's a raise?), so while we watch all of our costs going up our wages freeze (or decrease, in some cases). We're moving again this September simply because the rent at our current place is too high for us even if it remains the same (which it wouldn't).

And every day I find myself wondering, “What's next?”